Thursday, May 21, 2015

While the overall Semiconductor grew 9% between 1st quarter in 2014
to 2015, 6 companies grew more than 20%.

The article below discusses IC Insights update of top 20
semiconductor supplier sales growth. Of the top 6 that grew more than 20%, only
one benefited from a merger. Of the top sale growth companies Sharp benefits
from growth in CMOS image sensors, while TSMC and GlobalFoundaries are
foundries.

The article and the table does not mention SanDisk, which has yearly revenue of
about $6.5B , portion of which is all the flash NAND chips used to
build their products.

SK Hynix moves into top 5, MediaTek climbs into top 10, and Sharp and UMC move into the top 20 ranking.

May 20, 2015 -- IC Insights will release its May Update to the 2015McClean Report later this month. This Update includes a discussion of the history and evolution of IC industry cycles, an update of the capital spending forecast by company, and a look at the top 25 1Q15 semiconductor suppliers (the top 20 1Q15 semiconductor suppliers are covered in this research bulletin).

The top-20 worldwide semiconductor (IC and O S D—optoelectronic, sensor, and discrete) sales ranking for 1Q15 is shown in Figure 1. It includes seven suppliers headquartered in the U.S., four in Japan, three in Taiwan, three in Europe, two in South Korea, and one in Singapore, a relatively broad representation of geographic regions.

The top-20 ranking includes three pure-play foundries (TSMC, GlobalFoundries, and UMC) and four fabless companies. It is interesting to note that the top four semiconductor suppliers all have different business models. Intel is essentially a pure-play IDM, Samsung a vertically integrated IC supplier, TSMC a pure-play foundry, and Qualcomm a fabless company.

IC Insights includes foundries in the top 20 semiconductor supplier ranking since it has always viewed the ranking as a top supplier list, not a marketshare ranking, and realizes that in some cases the semiconductor sales are double counted. With many of our clients being vendors to the semiconductor industry (supplying equipment, chemicals, gases, etc.), excluding large IC manufacturers like the foundries would leave significant “holes” in the list of top semiconductor suppliers. As shown in the listing, the foundries and fabless companies are identified. In the April Update to The McClean Report, marketshare rankings of IC suppliers by product type were presented and foundries were excluded from these listings.

It should be noted that not all foundry sales should be excluded when attempting to create marketshare data. For example, although Samsung had a large amount of foundry sales in 1Q15, some of its foundry sales were to Apple. Since Apple does not resell these devices, counting these foundry sales as Samsung IC sales does not introduce double counting.

Figure 1

Overall, the top-20 list shown in Figure 1 is provided as a guideline to identify which companies are the leading semiconductor suppliers, whether they are IDMs, fabless companies, or foundries.

In total, the top 20 semiconductor companies’ sales increased by 9% in 1Q15/1Q14 (6% excluding the foundries), three points greater than the total worldwide semiconductor industry growth rate. Although, in total, the top-20 1Q15 semiconductor companies registered a 9% increase, there were six companies that displayed >20% 1Q15/1Q14 growth. Nine companies had sales of at least $2.0 billion in 1Q15. As shown, it took just over $1.1 billion in quarterly sales just to make it into the 1Q15 top-20 semiconductor supplier ranking.

There were two new entrants into the top 20 ranking in 1Q15—Japan-based Sharp and Taiwan-based pure-play foundry UMC, which replaced U.S.-based AMD and Nvidia. AMD had a particularly rough 1Q15 and saw its sales drop 26% year-over-year. It currently appears that AMD’s 2013 restructuring and new strategy programs to focus on non-PC end-use segments have yet to pay off for the company (in addition to its sales decline, AMD lost $180 million in 1Q15 after losing $403 million in 2014).

Although Intel’s sales were flat in 1Q15, and it believes its 2015 sales will be flat with 2014, it remained firmly in control of the number one spot. There were, however, some significant changes in the remainder of the top 10 ranking.

SK Hynix continued its ascent up the semiconductor company rankings that started a few years ago and moved into 5th place in 1Q15, displacing Micron. With Qualcomm’s sales hitting a soft patch and SK Hynix continuing to gain share in the memory market, IC Insights believes that the company could move past Qualcomm into the fourth spot when the full-year sales totals for this year are tallied.

While MediaTek’s growth has slowed somewhat from its torrid pace over the past few years, the company posted a year-over-year sales increase of 12% to move into the top 10. IC Insights believes that MediaTek will remain in this position in the full-year 2015 ranking.

Although Sharp as a whole is having a difficult time, its semiconductor group, which represents only about 14% of the company’s corporate sales, posted a whopping 62% growth rate (an 88% increase in yen), the best 1Q15 sales increase of any top-20 semiconductor supplier. This sales surge was almost entirely due to the company’s success in the CMOS image sensor market.

As would be expected, given the possible acquisitions and mergers that could occur this year (e.g., NXP/Freescale, GlobalFoundries/IBM’s IC group, etc.), as well as any new ones that may develop, the top 20 semiconductor ranking is likely to undergo a tremendous amount of upheaval over the next couple of years as the semiconductor industry continues along its path to maturity.

Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Co ELD on Palladium/Tungsten (Pd/W) for different timed stops to yield an (i) under fill, (ii) potential ideal stop or an (iii) overburden in 28nm holes

Metal
interconnects is a keys area that limits the shrinking of semiconductor die size. A recent advance in the development of the 7 nm technology is reported
below by IMEC with Lam research.

"Co ELD technique was demonstrated as a feasible method for highly selective
bottom-up contact fill and via prefill with Cobalt (Co) as an alternative metal
to Copper (Cu). Moreover, the high selectivity of the ELD process, at lower
cost compared to Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD), intrinsically ensures a good
metal-to-metal interface and paves the way to void-free via filling and
increased yield."

During the IEEE IITC conference in Grenoble, the nanoelectronics research center imec and Lam Research Corporation today presented a novel bottom-up prefill technique for vias and contacts. The technique, based on Electroless Deposition (ELD) of Cobalt (Co) is a highly selective method resulting in void-free filling of via and contact holes. Potentially increasing the circuit performance, it is a promising path to scaling advanced interconnects and enabling future logic and DRAM nodes at the 7nm node and below.

As logic and memory nodes scale, performance of these advanced interconnects is negatively impacted by increasing interconnect resistance. Furthermore, voids that occur in heavily scaled vias severely impact yield. imec’s industrial affiliation program on advanced interconnects is exploring novel metallization methods to solve these issues. One way to solve the problem is to identify integration and metallization alternatives that provide resistance benefits over conventional technology without compromising reliability and yield. Together with Lam Research, a Co ELD technique was demonstrated as a feasible method for highly selective bottom-up contact fill and via prefill with Cobalt (Co) as an alternative metal to Copper (Cu). Moreover, the high selectivity of the ELD process, at lower cost compared to Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD), intrinsically ensures a good metal-to-metal interface and paves the way to void-free via filling and increased yield. Trench fill yield and line resistance may also benefit from the de-coupling of line and via aspect ratios, permitting the design of each for optimum Resistance/Capacitance (RC). Therefore, Co prefill ELD has the potential to enable future scaling of advanced logic and memory technologies.

Monday, May 18, 2015

Micron has benefited from its timely acquisition
of Elpida . The chart presents in a nice graphically way semiconductor
manufacturers ranking by size and products.

One issue with this ranking is that SanDisk has a joint venture
with Toshiba which produce all of its NAND chips. SanDisk has yearly revenue of about $6.5B ,
portion of which is all the flash NAND chips used to build their products. It
would be interesting where a combined Toshiba / SanDisk rank would be in the chart.

According to MIC, Micron has emerged as the fifth largest chip manufacturer in the world. In 2014, Micron earned US$16.4 billion and climbed all the way from tenth to fifth place, only next to Intel, Samsung, TSMC and Qualcomm."Micron has been highly engaged in M&A activities and strategic alliances over the past years. Those two approaches, though not new, have been able to help Micron obtain the most outcomes such as increased sales and profitability," says Hui-Chung Tu, industry analyst with MIC.

Micron's ability to spot good investment timing is another factor determining its success. Among all, perhaps the most noteworthy deployment of Micron is its deployment in DRAM. Micron has witnessed a strong uptake in DRAM and NAND flash businesses with its annual revenue breaking US$14 billion.

This has helped Micron land in top-five semiconductor vendors, next to Intel, Samsung, TSMC and Qualcomm. While the growth momentum continued well into 2014, Micron is expected to continue to cling to the fifth spot in 2015, as the global economy is showing promising signs.

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

The article below summarize key aspects of the new Apple watch. It is important to remember that Apple goal is to extend its ecosystem to a new interface- the watch. It pushing the manufacturing envelope further-

‘”The encapsulation of the entire printed circuit board assembly into a single monolithic module is especially noteworthy,” Keller said. “Whereas many products might have some form of semi-flexible encapsulant applied to the board for protection, shock and vibration purposes, Apple has effectively created one large IC out of the entire assembly. This encapsulation is done by encasing the board in the same plastic/epoxy material used for conventional ICs. Indeed, many of the devices found inside the assembly are already encapsulated, effectively creating an IC-within-an-IC affair."

The
much-anticipated new Apple Watch has the lowest hardware costs compared to
retail price of any Apple phone IHS Technology has researched, according to a
preliminary estimate by IHS and its Teardown Mobile Handsets Intelligence
Service.The teardown of the Apple Watch Sport by IHS Technology estimates that
the actual hardware costs are only about 24 percent of the manufacturer’s suggested
retail price (MSRP). Estimated hardware cost to MSRP ratios for other Apple
products reviewed by IHS are in the range of 29% to 38%.

The
teardown of the Apple Watch Sport 38 mm by IHS Technology shows a bill of
materials of $81.20 with the cost of production rising to $83.70 when the $2.50
manufacturing expense is added. The retail price of the Apple Watch Sport 38 mm
is $349.00. The
IHS Technology analysis does not include logistics, amortised capital expenses,
overhead, SG&A, R&D, software, IP licensing and other variables
throughout the supply chain such as the EMS provider.

“It
is fairly typical for a first-generation product rollout to have a higher
retail price versus hardware cost,” says Kevin Keller, senior principal
analyst-materials and cost benchmarking services for IHS Technology. “While
retail prices always tend to decrease over time, the ratio for the Apple Watch is lower than
what we saw for the iPhone 6 Plus and other new Apple products, and could be of
great benefit to Apple’s bottom line if sales match the interest the Apple
Watch has generated.”

There
are several new features and manufacturing methods used in the Apple Watch
Sport, including: a Pulse Oximeter, Force Touch sensor, “Taptic Engine”
feedback, encapsulated modular printed circuit board (PCB) assembly and
stacked-die integrated circuits (IC). “While
these features have been promoted by Apple and none are necessarily
revelatory,” Keller says. “It is noteworthy that many features are appearing
for the first time – in combination – in one device. It could be a bellwether
for other future Apple products.”

The
Taptic Engine built into the Apple Watch, and integrated with the loudspeaker,
contains a linear actuator which provides haptic feedback and vibrations. “We
found that the device consumes a substantial amount of space inside the watch,
and we would expect further miniaturization of this function in future iterations
of the product,” he adds.

The
preliminary results of the teardown do not show any big surprises in the IC
content; all of the manufacturers identified so far were expected. The Apple
Watch NAND memory is a Toshiba Flash 8GB and DRAM is a Micron SDRAM 512Mb.
Broadcom, STMicro, Maxim, Analogue Devices and NXP are used for connectivity
and interface. One noteworthy change is a shift from Invensense to STMicro for
the accelerometer/gyroscope.

“The
display is LG’s plastic OLED display and the touchscreen overlay module is a
TPK Slim GG utilising their ‘Force Touch’ technology,” Keller says. “Force
Touch was recently incorporated into the latest MacBook and is expected to be
found in the next iPhone generation.”

The
fabrication of the enclosure continues the Apple “Unibody” tradition of
precision machining from a single block of aluminium. Apple is now extending
this design philosophy into a highly miniaturized realm, mating the legacy of
precision watchmaking with Apple’s specialized manufacturing practices. As with
their previous products, Apple has taken fabrication techniques – once
typically restricted to low-volume manufacturing and prototyping – and scaled
them into a high-volume production environment.

‘”The
encapsulation of the entire printed circuit board assembly into a single
monolithic module is especially noteworthy,” Keller said. “Whereas many
products might have some form of semi-flexible encapsulant applied to the board
for protection, shock and vibration purposes, Apple has effectively created one
large IC out of the entire assembly. This encapsulation is done by encasing the
board in the same plastic/epoxy material used for conventional ICs. Indeed,
many of the devices found inside the assembly are already encapsulated,
effectively creating an IC-within-an-IC affair.

“To
provide electromagnetic shielding, the encapsulated PCB assembly is further
treated with a metalized coating deposited over the surface,” Keller adds.
“This shielding process is used in place of conventional stamped sheet metal shielding,
saving a significant amount of space, as well as cutting down slightly on
weight.”

The
Apple Watch is equipped with inductive charging technology and is being shipped
with a wireless charger, based on Apple’s own proprietary MagSafe charging technology.

“It
has been speculated that the Apple Watch could be compatible with the Wireless
Power Consortium’s (WPC) Qi wireless charging specification,” says Vicky
Yussuff, analyst-power supplies & wireless power for IHS. “AppleInsider
recently shared a video which appears to show the Apple Watch MagSafe charger
being used to charge the Moto 360 smart watch. This would suggest that Apple’s
charger is Qi-compatible.

“Apple
has not been announced as a member of the WPC or even a supporter of the
consortium, so it is unlikely that they have produced a ‘certified’ Qi product.
However, the Qi specification is an open standard meaning it is still possible
for Apple to build products which are compatible to the specification. This
could be the case with the Apple Watch MagSafe charger,” Yussuff says.
“Although it cannot be verified if both the Moto 360 smartwatch and
Magsafe wireless charger used in the video were both un-modified ‘off the
shelf’ products, this could potentially be another boost for the wireless charging
industry looking to increase interoperability.”

The
Apple Watch battery appears to be somewhat simpler to replace than the
batteries in many other Apple products. As long as the display can be carefully
removed, the battery is attached with a simple snap-on connector.